My Actual Figures for July346 cold dials to the 2 niches$7404 in Sales (4 x Websites+Hosting for $1177, $1357, $450 and $1360. 3 x SEO/GP for 6 and 12 months, $1050, $850 and $800 respectively. Yes, some people got ridiculously cheap SEO/GP deals, but the keywords are low competition so meh. Finally, I got a plumber pay for hosting for 12 months, for $360. He will have the site designed later.)

So, yeah. The unfortunate part of this month was that 2 of these haven't made deposits yet, just verbal confirmation. But I have spoken to each on the phone 5-6 times negotiating the deals and they both ended the negotiations in the last few days with 'yes, let's do it', so I count them as sales.

Also of note :

- 1 sale ($1500) was from previous cold calling, about 2 months back. He contacted me again and wanted to go ahead with a site and Google Places.

- Another sale ($1360) was from a round of emails I sent out at the end of June, but he didn't go ahead until July so I counted it in this month.

- Finally, the last sale I got was TODAY (31st) from a referral from one of my current clients. He referred a plumbing business who paid for 12 months hosting and a domain which they want the site done later in August.

So, just for those of you who are cold calling (and those who aren't but SHOULD BE!!), this month I got :

Yeah, I didn't write 'calls' so as not to cause confusion. Although it already did haha. Yeah dials are just dialling the number, what comes after could be anything, disconnect/answer/wrong number/voicemail etc

Cheers to closing those sales. I can't believe you make that many cold calls. My suggestion to you would be do your SEO for yourself and your marketing company, same with GP and then social media, like LinkedIn and Facebook. Doing this correctly, you will have people contacting you and then you can cherry pick your clients.
I actually suggest this to all Offline Marketers, whether your cold calling or using direct mail. Your potential client will most likely do their due diligence and research/Google your name and company. You need to look like a expert, have references and reviews.

Probably, I would roughly guess, about 8-12 hours of calling total for the month.

As you can see, I hit it pretty hard for one week, and that ended with about 3.5k in sales. The others were deals from last month, or callbacks from previous cold calling sessions.

I think the real question you are asking was 'Was this hard, gruelling, draining work?' My answer? Easiest money I have ever made. I used to work in retail, and my god, it's just soooooo much better. Because at the end of the day, you get to sit on your ass 'dialling for dollars' and just take breaks and play video games in between.

The main 'work' parts of my business are managing the outsourcers, the clients expectations and the cold calling. I might spend 2 hours per day on managing outsourcers, 1-2 hours cold calling and maybe do a couple calls to clients each day.

Scripts?

I use what John Durham calls the 'white belt' approach to cold calling. This basically means playing the numbers game, and just spamming out as many calls as possible until I get a bite, with very little scripting. As you can see, it works.

What I DO make sure I do, is follow up EVERY interested lead. ALWAYS follow up via phone/email at least twice. This builds trust and increases your chances to close.

Probably, I would roughly guess, about 8-12 hours of calling total for the month.

As you can see, I hit it pretty hard for one week, and that ended with about 3.5k in sales. The others were deals from last month, or callbacks from previous cold calling sessions.

I think the real question you are asking was 'Was this hard, gruelling, draining work?' My answer? Easiest money I have ever made. I used to work in retail, and my god, it's just soooooo much better. Because at the end of the day, you get to sit on your ass 'dialling for dollars' and just take breaks and play video games in between.

The main 'work' parts of my business are managing the outsourcers, the clients expectations and the cold calling. I might spend 2 hours per day on managing outsourcers, 1-2 hours cold calling and maybe do a couple calls to clients each day.

Scripts?

I use what John Durham calls the 'white belt' approach to cold calling. This basically means playing the numbers game, and just spamming out as many calls as possible until I get a bite, with very little scripting. As you can see, it works.

What I DO make sure I do, is follow up EVERY interested lead. ALWAYS follow up via phone/email at least twice. This builds trust and increases your chances to close.

Where do you find your outsourcers? How do you know which ones to pick and how much they cost?

Wow people pay $360 for whole year. I think I am underselling myself !! I am assuming you are using reseller hosting.

If you don't mind answering, people who are paying $1000+ websites have a lot of custom work in websites or are they just the standard 5-8 page website ?

These are all 5 page standard sites. Actually, one site was like 10 pages but it was a redesign and I only charged him $1360. This turned out to be a massive fail, because the client ended up to be very picky too, which resulted in a lot of time wasted changing the design over and over. I have probably done the equivalent of $2000-$2500 worth of work for this client!!

But yeah, stop charging $500-$600 and start charging $1000 + hosting. You will get it!

From oDesk, I work with Filipino's because they are close to my timezone (Aus) and have a great grasp on the English language.

The web designers work for between $4 - $11 an hour.

Although I have been having mixed results, you just have to keep trying with different people until you find the right match. A big thing I have been looking at recently is availability. Sometimes my designers don't even come online until 8 or 9pm at night, which can leave me twiddling my thumbs throughout the day.

My leads are scraped from Google Places searches. I tell my outsourcers to target all the Google Places results for 'painters city' bar the top 6 or 7 and scrape their phone number and business name.

The scraper is a VA from the Phillipines. I used to use Power Lead Snatcher, until it started bugging out and leaving white spaces where it used to show listings.

Pricing

I have a 'websites starting from $600 + hosting' on my site, but that was my old quote, now I start at $997 minimum, and am trying $1497 this month, because I am already way ahead from last month. I want to test the differences, apparently testing different price points is good.

Haha, thanks Ken, will definitely keep you in mind. I am a bit annoyed today actually, I tried my new '$1497+$360' price point on a referral from a friend, but haven't heard back yet. Just a little bit nerve wracking when you send a quote to a hot lead and you don't hear back haha

Also, to the above question about calling locally, I call both locally and around the country. So far, most clients are local, but I have picked up more than a couple nationally.

Hey Payoman, thanks for the details. I think details can be very inspiring and also give direction to people like me who are just getting into this.
One question, you said you closed 3 deals in appointments. So I am assuming these are local. Are you calling other areas/cities as well?

im looking to oursource to oDesk / freelancer as well.
How much on average are you paying per 5-6 page WP website?

setting up a WP so easy. why would you outsource it? I have a russian designer i pay $15 per hour to for fixing up some coding issues when I have them. usually he doesn't have to do more than 5 or 6 hours of work

setting up a WP so easy. why would you outsource it? I have a russian designer i pay $15 per hour to for fixing up some coding issues when I have them. usually he doesn't have to do more than 5 or 6 hours of work

Maybe his goal isn't to be a self employed webdesigner but rather a business-owner?

Perhaps he'd like to sell more websites and work on marketing, perhaps he just prefers chilling on the beach with his friends. That's three reasons, I can probably think of another thousand. lol..

im looking to oursource to oDesk / freelancer as well.
How much on average are you paying per 5-6 page WP website?

I have designers from my country which is a bit more expensive so I can't help you with the pricing question. However I can offer some advice: find great people. Good people and quality work is so huge, can't emphasize it enough. Get people who can over-deliver every single time, it's well worth the extra money you have to spend.

On topic: I love this thread, maybe people who do cold calling should have a thread each month where they write their stats and all. Good motivation and good to count your results so you can analyze.

payoman, I know you were leery about making your results public. But I just want to say thank you for the inspiration you have provided. I have printed out your results and I am going to keep them nearby for when I start to get discouraged!

They are all modified templates, some more heavily modified than others.

What are you charging for Google Places, are you also charging a monthly maintenance?

I am charging between $0-$250 for setup and between $100-$200 per month, usually paid upfront. The reason for price differences is the amount of traffic the keywords get. I don't feel comfortable charging alot for keywords that get less than 50 exact matches a month.

what are your prices for SEO?

Roughly the same as Google Places, sometimes cheaper depending on the keywords.

EDIT : Am I not charging enough? Probably, but I am still in the early stages of business and August is a big test month of new price points.